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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Guest MINDSETTER Andrew Stewart

I am not a dolt and, as someone who has studied media history, I recognize this narrative discourse quite clearly. Unfortunately many local progressives do not and it is to all our peril. Essentially everyone is being played by the deceptive, manipulative and corrupt media responsible for, among other things, justifying the Iraq war with a false story about WMDs, biased coverage of the recent presidential campaign to favor Hillary Clinton at the expense of Bernie Sanders, and a whole host of other fake news stories that have been used to the detriment of the public. So heres my brief on how unfathomably and unbelievably dangerous this Russia nonsense actually is.

Since at the latest 2012, the overwhelming majority of the population has been getting pretty sick of what has been known for 25 years as consensus politics, a set of policies and laws that alternatively can be called neoliberalism/neoconservatism, corporatism, or cronyism. Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter/Movement for Black Lives, the anti-fracking/fossil fuel infrastructure expansion movement, all these and more are instances of a popular revolt unseen in over a century. Or more precisely, 156 years.

We have entered into a period where the public is finally waking up and becoming ungovernable in a fashion akin to 1861-65, when we had this little fracas known as the Civil War. Now obviously there are some massive differences, including the fact that a separate republic has yet to form out of secessionist states. But in the same way that the governors of certain states jutted out their mutton-chopped chins to towards Washington and said NO so we have seen the public telling the powers-that-be to take a hike. Obviously the reason for this resistance is the absolute opposite from the motivation of the Confederacy, slavery, but in terms of the power dynamics, the people have become ungovernable. And because it is the absolute opposite of the Confederate motivation, we can actually applaud this. Rhode Island native Grace Lee Boggs said in the final years of her life We are the leaders we have been looking for, by which she meant we need no parties or politicians to tell us what to do. Instead we are the agents of our own destiny and can do far more than any elected official ever would.

If you doubt me, just look at Providence, which seems to be hosting every week some sort of protest, picket line, or demonstration on multiple days that wholeheartedly rejects an element of the consensus politics. This made itself on the national stage most recently in the case of the populist uprising that gravitated around the presidential campaigns of retro-New Dealer Bernie Sanders and retro-Dixiecrat Donald Trump.

The elites in the 1% have also caught onto this. And they are getting pretty nervous. As such they are trotting out an old strategy from their playbook of public manipulation tactics.

Just over seven decades ago, something like this also happened. The United States emerged from the ritualistic human sacrifice known as World War II as the only victor totally unscathed by the conflagration. While Berlin, London, Rome, and Tokyo were effectively nothing more that vast expanses populated with bloody piles of rubble, the American home front was host to sprawling metropolises that were peopled by an extremely civically-engaged, patriotic, and progressive-leaning white voter base living in the northern half of the United States. What is forgotten about World War II is how, at a time when the AFL, the CIO, and the Communist Party USA all demanded their members abide by a near-sacred wartime no-strike pledge, the country was host to hundreds of unauthorized, illegal wildcat strikes. This was when the government and press were able to say without a hint of hyperbole in their inflection that If you walk off the job, Hitler will win the war! Simultaneously gays, women, and Blacks began to organize into a cohesive element agitating for civil rights.

So what did the ruling elites do?

The Democrats started a false panic about Russia.

Harry Truman got the ball rolling with his loyalty oaths and purging federal employment of Communist subversives while blaming domestic protests on Joseph Stalin rather than Democratic Party mistreatment of progressives and minorities they allied themselves with. Sen. Susan Collins has already begun this sort of discussion again by having Dr. Eugene Rumer testify on March 30 that Occupy Wall Street was supported by Russian media, saying that It's a perfect example in that Occupy Wall Street was a genuine movement on the Left. But it certainly serves the interests of Russian propaganda to play it up as a major challenge, as something representing a major fault line in our society. because, you know, it drives the message that the United States is in decline, that the United States is in crisis, it plays up to audiences at home in Russia and abroad, that the United States is not the perfect society, something that they really like to emphasize. So that's -- that's -- that's an excellent example. And I think it deserves the attention that you -- the spotlight that you cast on it It's blown out of all proportions. And as you know, the best propaganda is that which has a grain of truth to it. Heaven forbid that the ruling elites actually admit how awfully they treat the 99% via austerity policies!

Then a raving lunatic named Joe McCarthy recognized he could make big headlines out of this stuff. Accusations of espionage and subversion leveled against a minor third party of progressives, the Communists, snowballed into accusations against the entirety of the Democratic Party. Indeed, as documented by Susan Jacoby in her book Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, the political discourse as framed by the Republicans continues today to carry antecedents that go back to the Red Scare. Right wing ideologues funded by the Koch brothers still say that Social Security, school desegregation, and other elements of the welfare state that come out of the New Deal and LBJs Great Society were in reality Communist plots.

This is all pertinent because it has now been revealed in the new book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clintons Doomed Campaign that this whole notion of Russia hacking the election was in fact merely a talking point manufactured hours after the end of the most bizarre 24 months in American history. Since last November the Democrats aligned with the Clinton machine have been pumping out through their lackeys in the press reams of absolute nonsense about Vladimir Putin and Russia that directly mimics the major talking points from the McCarthy years.

Now, did Russian-owned media, such as RT and Sputnik Radio, publish pro-Trump stories during the election? Yes, and this is because they have no principles and will support any politician who says they oppose saber-rattling towards the Kremlin. RT and Sputnik acted the same way most recently with Marine Le Pen because she was opposed to the forces which have been steadily and without warrant encircling the Russian border with heavy artillery pointed directly at Moscow over the past 20 years. But then again the Daily Worker, the news venue also getting cash from the Kremlin, would endorse FDR during an election, does such endorsement mean he was a stooge of Joseph Stalin? And does this indicate more than anything else how progressives have so substantially abandoned opposition to war that such anxieties find expression only in the anti-interventionist/isolationist right? Over the past eight years the anti-war movement locally has been reduced to low ranks from its peak over a decade ago at the start of the Iraq war.

Quite obviously there are certainly plenty of qualms to raise about Putin and the Russian government he leads. As a queer man I have a significant feeling of solidarity with LGBTQQIA+ folks in Russia who are subjected to state violence stemming from laws that target same-sex attracted people. But I also am forced to wonder whether these local liberal/progressives would be raising this sort of stink about the connections of a President Hillary Clinton and that veritable oasis of feminism known as Saudi Arabia. At this point multiple news agencies and reporters, including my current editor at Washington Babylon, Ken Silverstein, have pointed out in serious muckraking venues that the Clinton Foundations ties with the House of Saud were quite substantial and were going to seriously impact American foreign policy in the Middle East regardless of domestic protests to the contrary.

As for the firing of James Comey, I shed not a single tear for the man who unleashed militarized goons on the protesters at Standing Rock and created from whole cloth the fantasy of a War on Cops. Local progressives who mourn his martyrdom are unwittingly saying therefore that Comeys COINTELPRO-styled espionage against American political protesters was part of a great career they wish to restore. Donald Trump is a nasty narcissistic white nationalist whose own bluster, blunder, and diet of Big Macs perhaps will either cause his ejection from office before 2020 or compel him to follow the lead of LBJ and limit himself to a single term. If there were devious items related to Trumps business connections with Russia, why only now and not in the past 36 months has this become an issue? Trumps garish and galling graft is simply so sloppy and saucy that he truly merits the respect shown anyone doing stand-up on amateur night at the Apollo.

Hillary Clintons foundation, by contrast, remains a galling hive of the most wretched malfeasance. Julian Assange told John Pilger in a November interview:

JOHN PILGER: In terms of the foreign policy of the United States, thats where the emails are most revealing, where they show the direct connection between Hillary Clinton and the foundation of jihadism, of ISIL, in the Middle East. Can you talk about how the emails demonstrate the connection between those who are meant to be fighting the jihadists of ISIL, are actually those who have helped create it.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Theres an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation. Even the U.S. government agrees that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIL, or ISIS. But the dodge has always been that, well its just some rogue Princes, using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that no, it is the governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding ISIS Libya, more than anyone elses war, was Hillary Clintons war. Barak Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it? Hillary Clinton. Thats documented throughout her emails. She had put her favoured agent, Sidney Blumenthal, on to that; theres more than 1700 emails out of the thirty three thousand Hillary Clinton emails that weve published, just about Libya. Its not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for President. So in late 2011 there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and its the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya; jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis. Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilisation of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itselfwas no longer able to control the movement of people through it. Libya faces along to the Mediterranean and had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa. So all problems, economic problems and civil war in Africa previously people fleeing those problems didnt end up in Europe because Libya policed the Mediterranean. That was said explicitly at the time, back in early 2011 by Gaddafi: What do these Europeans think theyre doing, trying to bomb and destroy the Libyan State? Theres going to be floods of migrants out of Africa and jihadists into Europe, and this is exactly what happened.

Say what you will about Putin, the plain fact is that Moscow does not publicly stone and behead women for things as offensive as atheism, witchcraft, adultery, and homosexuality as these Clinton Foundation clients do. Lets just put those things into perspective while we are on the topic of foreign entanglements, business connections, and political corruption stemming from it. This Putin-phobia is senseless and dangerous for several reasons.

We are trotting down a very well-worn and repeatedly rotten-resulting road here. I say that we should get off this path and stay ungovernable. The Democrats are entirely and solely responsible for the election of Donald Trump. We should never forgive them this as long as they live. We should not allow ourselves to be played for fools by a manipulative and deceptive media industry with a faux-progressive sheen that aligns with these Democrats and promotes militarism and war with Russia in the name of distraction from their own wrongdoing. Lets instead given them the misery they deserve. A century ago, a certain Democratic Socialist said in an interview that one must be as radical as reality itself.

Lets do it.

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Guest MINDSETTER Stewart: Local Progressives Aiming Gun at Own Foot, Will They Pull Trigger? - GoLocalProv

Nothing in the Russiastory will improve the personal economies of working-class Americans. It will not give them good health care. It will not rebuild infrastructure to provide jobs. It will not educate our children. So while working-class America continuesto suffer from subpar wages, while they continue to see their health carecosts rise,they hear a narrative that's anathema to their reality. The liberal intelligentsia, the Democratic establishment,is concentrating on a subject that will do absolutely nothing to make their lives better while at the same time giving President Charlatan an excuse for his inability to accomplish anything for the working class.

No one is asking that we ignore the Russiastory. In fact, taking it off of the front burner as folks build a substantive,evidence-based case would be much more effective. Think of how impactful a breaking story would bebut one thatis well-developed,where the Trump family's financial entanglements and collusion with Russia emerge with clarity.It would be much more effective than the daily Russian repetitiousness which causes everyonebut the political junkiesto switch to the Food Network,Discovery Channel, ESPN, or some other station to break said monotony.

So what should the progressive intelligentsiaexpend its resources on?Education, for startersbutin a manner that is palatable to working-class America. Trumps three mostdisruptive policiesTrumpcare, tax cuts, and immigrationcan be tied into a perfect economic narrative that exposes Republicans for the charlatans that they are.

Instead of spending time repeating the same old Russiastory, journalists should go to every industrialized country and do reports aboutreal people interacting with their health care systems, illustrating pricing and outcomes. Go to highly-taxed industrialized countries and talk to working-class people who can describe the social benefits they receive from their government. Do the mathematical analysis that showswhen Americans include their insurance costs,child care expenses, elderly care costs,and other expensesabsorbed by the state, how much more efficient it is than some invisible source capturing some unearned profit. The shortage of farm workers created by Trump's xenophobic stance will ensure higher prices for our produce and other farm goods.

Most of us in the progressive intelligentsiaknow there is a fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats, since the lattertruly believe in the Democratic platform.The problem is that we are governed within a thin center that minimizes the differences, somany in the working class see a convergence into the establishmentwithlittle distinction between the parties.

Many of us are hesitant to engage those who chose Trump, simplybecause we know how flawed they are. A few weeks ago Iwrote the following, and I hope manymore willheed it.

Many Americans are racists. Some are homophobes. Too many are sexists. A growing number are xenophobic. Misogyny still reigns. Americans are humans with all the frailty humanity brings. We will not fix these defect within our lifetime.

We can break the backs of the Republicans if we stop striving towardan unachievable purity and insteadworkon economic, health, and other commonalities while refusing to allow our human defects to stopall progress. It can be done.

Here is an aside that liberalsshould note: Ivebeen to many Netroots conventionsand a couple of tea partyconferences. This black Caribbean Latino with a Panamanian accent was treated better at the tea partyconference than at Netroots when outside of my Daily Kos clique.In fact, I wrote about oneshocking experience at Netroots Nation 2015 that is worth a read.

Yes, of course thetea partywas likely trying to make a point with me, but that is my point. Like them, we can suppress our bad urges when we want to accomplish agoal.

Liberals will do well to read the Politico piece titled "Why Liberals Arent as Tolerant as They Think,which may open the eyes of those willing to self-examine. It's something we can work on within our local progressive groups.

If we progressivesdon't change our game now, we willhave squandered the opportunity to take over the House and the Senate in 2018 and the White Housein 2020. Republicans care less about losing Trump than we do. They will be happy with President Pence and the semblance of a Republican ultra-conservativerebirth.

And so far, theyresellinga bad product much better than we are able to sell a good one.

Continued here:
Progressives are blowing 2018 by dedicating too many resources to Russia story - Daily Kos

Last month, when House Republicans passed legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, Democrats broke out in song and dance on the House floor, serenading Republicans for their successful vote with the words from a famous song, Nah Nah Nah Nah, Hey Hey, Goodbye.

Really? Democrats and progressives lost three successive national elections because they passed and obstinately stood with Obamacare, and now Republicans are going to be thrown out for repealing and replacing it?

Obamacare was first enacted into law in March 2010. That fall, Democrats lost a New Deal (in reverse) size landslide when Republicans gained 63 seats in the House. That removed Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and replaced her with her intellectual antithesis: policy guru Paul Ryan. Republicans have increased their House majority ever since.

In 2014, Republicans seized control of the Senate, winning 9 seats for a 54 to 45 Republican majority. That Republican control will likely continue for many years, as 25 seats held by Democrats more than half of all remaining Senate Democrats are up for reelection in 2018, 10 in states won by Trump. With only 8 Republican Senate seats up in the next midterms, there is now a greater chance of Republicans winning a filibuster proof majority 60 seats next year, than of Democrats winning a Senate majority, especially given Democrat positions on the issues.

In 2016, Democrats suffered their greatest shock loss of the White House to political newcomer Donald Trump. No one who had never been previously elected to any office had ever won the Presidency, except generals who had led America to victory in major wars (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower).

The silly notion that Senate Republicans are at political risk because they repealed/replaced Obamacare is adamantly echoed by the Democrat Party controlled media. That is all the more ridiculous because the Republican bill actually makes good on all the failed promises Obama Democrats made to win enactment of Obamacare in 2010:

President Obama famously said that under his Obamacare legislation, If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period. But even Democrat controlled media labelled that the lie of the year. It turned out that if Obama liked your health plan you could keep your health plan. Millions of Americans lost healthcare plans they were perfectly happy with, because their plans did not include cover all the Obamacare required benefits that Democrats think health insurance should cover. The Republican bill repeals both the individual and employer mandates, liberating workers to choose the health plan they prefer.

Obama promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. But as working families lost their health plans, they often lost their doctors too, especially as insurers struggling under all the Obamacare mandates and regulations restricted coverage to narrow networks of doctors and hospitals. Under the Republican plan, by contrast, working families are free to choose a health plan that includes their doctor.

Obama promised that health insurance premiums would decline under Obamacare by $2,500 per year per family. But instead, health premiums have soared by much more than $2,500 per year as a result of all the taxes and regulatory costs Obamacare imposes, nearly doubling in some states. By repealing those taxes, mandates and regulatory costs, the Republican plan will substantially reduce health insurance premiums. So will the insurance market competition the Republican plan engenders.

Obamacare did not even achieve universal coverage, as Obama misled Progressives to think. From the beginning, CBO projected 30 million Americans would remain uninsured 10 years after Obamacare was fully implemented. Most of those who gained coverage under Obamacare did so through expansion of Medicaid, an entitlement program financed entirely by taxpayers.

While CBO has not yet scored the just passed House Republican bill, the score of the initial bill showed that it would reduce federal spending by $1.2 trillion (almost all entitlement spending), cut taxes by $900 billion, and reduce federal deficits by over $300 billion. If you add trillions in reduced regulatory costs, any bill close to that would involve the greatest reduction in government in American history, providing a strong boost to the economy. That would be enormously popular with grassroots Republicans, Independents and even blue collar Democrats.

The sole political risk to Republicans is if they fail to enact a repeal and replace bill, which would cause enormous intraparty strife. Even more danger lurks if Senate Republicans agree to Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumers demand to sit down and negotiate a plan Democrats think would fix Obamacare, rather than replace it with free market solutions such as choice and competition.

The focus among Senate Republicans should be to ignore the instincts of Northeast Senate RINOs to water down the House bill, keeping spending, taxes, deficits, and regulatory costs high enough to undermine any economic recovery, and the future of the American dream. Republicans instead need to follow Speaker Paul Ryans Jack Kemp vision to maximize freedom and prosperity for all Americans.

Lew Uhler is Founder and President of the National Tax Limitation Committee and the National Tax Limitation Foundation (NTLF). He was a contemporary and collaborator of both Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. Peter Ferrara is a Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute, and a Senior Policy Advisor to NTLF. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.

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Progressives Do Not Grasp The Politics Of Health Care - The Daily Caller

Let me tell you the story about how many politically progressive Christians came to think they were Anabaptists. (Im mainly talking about post-evangelical progressives rather than traditional mainline progressives.)

To recap, Ive made the argument that many progressive Christians believe they are Anabaptists when, in fact, they are Niebuhrians. This truth was exposed with the election of Donald Trump. The rise of Trump has politically energized progressive Christians in ways that are hard to reconcile with Anabaptist theology and practice. Again, this is no judgment of Anabaptist theology or of all the political activism of progressive Christians. Not at all. This is just a description of the disjoint between political theology and political praxis.

Most progressive Christians want to be politically engaged. Very much so. Especially with Donald Trump in office. But Anabaptist theology doesnt provide great theological scaffolding for much of that political activism. Thus my advice: Seek out and embrace a political theology that provides better theological support. To my eye, I think that theology is Reinhold Niebuhrs Christian realism.

But that raises a different question. Why did so many progressive Christians come to embrace Anabaptist theology in the first place?

Thats the story I want to tell you.

The story starts in 2003, with George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. Many progressive Christians mobilized against that war. At the time, social media was just exploding. Blogging was in its Golden Age. Twitter would show up in 2006, just in time for the 2007-2008 Presidential campaign where we debated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, torture and Guantanamo Bay.

As these debates raged on social media, Anabaptist theology, with its criticisms of nationalism and war, became a powerful theological tool in the hands of progressive Christians to level indictments at the Bush administration.

In addition, emergent and post-evangelical expressions of Christianity were going strong. Many disaffected and disillusioned evangelicals were looking around for theological positions that critiqued how evangelicalism had been co-opted by politics. With its strong criticisms of Constantinianism, Anabaptist theology also fit that bill.

And so it was during these years that many progressive Christians, in using Anabaptist theology so effectively to critique the Bush administration and the politicization of evangelicalism, convinced themselves that they were Anabaptists.

But they werent Anabaptists, not really.

Why werent progressives Anabaptists? Two reasons.

First, theres more to Anabaptist theology than its peace witness. Anabaptist theology also espouses a robust ecclesiology, the church as the locus of life and political witness. This aspect of Anabaptist theology doesnt sit well with many progressive Christians, who would rather work as political activists than invest in the daily life of a local church. To be sure, many post-evangelical progressive Christians harbor nostalgia for the local church, memories of hymn sings, youth camps, vacation Bible school and pot luck casseroles. But at the end of the day, progressive Christians tend to think calling Congress, community organizing and marching in protests are the best ways to make the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Second, the robust ecclesiology of Anabaptist thought and practice works with a strong church-vs.-world distinction. This contrast has been famously captured by Stanley Hauerwas: The first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world. In Anabaptist thought the church is set apart from the world, its goal to be a witness to the Powers by making a stark contrast between the kingdom of God and Babylon.

That negative view of the world has never sat well with progressives, who, being liberals, tend to have a very favorable view of the world, a view which sits behind their very open, inclusive, cosmopolitan, non-judgmental social ethic. Progressives want to embrace the world, they dont want to create a community that highlights the darkness and depravity of the world. For many post-evangelical progressives, a negative view of the world smacks of the judgmentalism they are fleeing from.

In short: During the Bush years, progressives used parts of Anabaptist theology to great effect. Progressive Christians denounced the evils of war, empire, nationalism and Constantinian Christianity. Progressive Christians were so effective in this critique that they started to think they actually were Anabaptists. But progressive Christians never really were Anabaptists. They were post-evangelicals who became Democrats.

Richard Beck is professor and department chair of psychology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author ofUnclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality and Mortality.Richards area of interest be it research, writing or blogging is on the interface of Christian theology and psychology, with a particular focus on how existential issues affect Christian belief and practice. He blogs atExperimental Theology, where this post originally appeared.

Excerpt from:
How did political progressives think they were Anabaptists? - Mennonite World Review

Theres a famous story about how Lana Turner was discovered: sitting in a Hollywood drugstore, sipping a soda. Next thing you know, shes one of the most sought after It girls of the 1940s.

There may be some key details left out of that account, but one can assume, at least in theory, that it makes sense.

What doesnt necessarily make sense? The recent fever pitch over 78-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who has been adopted by a new generation as Auntie Maxine.

Waters has spent more than four decades in public service but its only now that shes become the political crush for young progressives. Thats due to her fierce attacks on President Trump and his new administration. While other politicians practice staid sound bites, Waters is extemporaneous and unpredictable. But usually her message is along the lines of Impeach 45!

That has made her deep raspy voice and withering facial expressions almost inescapable recently.

Although shes been a staple of cable news shows on CNN and MSNBC, Waters popularity and reach have surpassed the traditional political audience and grabbed hold of young left-leaning hearts and minds.

In the past month alone, shes appeared at the MTV Music Awards where she basked and curtsied in the roaring applause of a standing ovation that went on and on. Shes been featured in the Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, Ebony and The Washington Posts Cape Up podcast.

But it was probably a January article by humor columnist R. Eric Thomas on Elle.com that catapulted the septuagenarian to stardom with the selfie-taking set and led to her new, familial nickname.

Apparently, Thomas, who has a Lana Turner story of his own he was hired by the magazine after being discovered on Twitter was home watching C-SPAN, when Waters serendipitously appeared on the screen.

Thomas had found a new muse.

If you havent seen the performance that launched hundreds of thousands of tweets, take 30 seconds to watch the whole thing. But if you dont have the time, heres what you need to know: Waters had left an intelligence briefing with then-FBI Director James Comey. She was not pleased with what she had heard.

Yes, can I help you? What do you want? is how she addressed reporters.

Thomas cant help laughing as he recalls watching it unfold in real time. I was like, Who is this person? he said, She walks into a press conference like theyre already on her last nerve.

He was delighted, flabbergasted and inspired and that led to this unforgettable paragraph:

I have never seen anything like this outside of a family reunion. Rep. Waters is definitely that auntie who got rich selling Avon and doesnt really like your father. Or any of these low-rent people. But you sit by her so that she can stage-whisper critiques with a mouth full of potato salad.

So, technically, the words Auntie Maxine may never have been strung together by Thomas, but he takes full credit anyway.

Its on my business card! he bragged.

Asheya Warren is among Waters legion of fans, and says the congresswomans frank style and shade-throwing skills are what appeal to her.

Its the way she says what she says, Warren said. Older women like Waters get a pass to freely speak their minds, added the 30-year-old.

Once a woman is over 60, she said, Youre able to say whatever you want to, whenever you want to. My mom does it, her two sisters do it, my grandmother did it, and again, thats why that Auntie moniker is so well received.

Waters is thrilled by it all.

I am surprised and honored to be so enthusiastically supported by millennials, she said by phone from her office in Los Angeles.

She says millennials though she may be a little generous with that designation stop her on the street, at the mall and in restaurants, with the same cry. Auntie Maxine! Oh my God, can I take a picture? they squeal in excitement.

Waters recognizes shes filling a void left by todays professional politicians, who are sometimes afraid to state their genuine opinions, fearing a backlash from constituents or the potential loss of their seat. But Im not afraid of that, she said defiantly. I will speak my mind.

And if that makes you want to call her Auntie, be ready. She likes giving hugs.

Original post:
'Auntie' Maxine: The Young Progressives' Political Crush of the Moment - KQED